Friday, January 8, 2016

New Stairway

It is such a small portion of our house and doesn't seem even worth the remodel compared to the other problems the house has, but because it's a smaller area, it also makes it an easier (and more affordable project. :-)

When we first moved in, the stairs were a bare wood color with no paint or anything homey about it. The railing was placed high with nothing but open space underneath it, making it dangerous for kids to fall through. The walls were an old white paint, full of markings and rusty hooks. The lamp was probably original with the house; probably because it is so high up that no one wanted to bother to change it.

But I had a vision of brightly colored walls and a pendant lamp hanging from the ceiling. Eventually, I would like to switch out the plain wooden door for a French door. After we replace the other broken doors, that is.

The hardest part of this project was the height of the ceiling. After borrowing a ladder from a neighbor and finding out that it wasn't tall enough, Dennis went to my Mom's to get my Dad's old ladder.

As he was driving along, he looked in the back of his truck and noticed that the ladder was gone. Where and when it disappeared, he didn't know. He had to backtrack quite a few miles, until he finally found it on the side of the road, crushed and mangled.

He felt terrible about it of course, and with the agreement from my mom, he bought a ladder that we can share with her. We will keep it at our house for the most part, since we need it more for house projects, and we will bring it over for anytime that she needs it. That's probably what we should have done anyway, but you know...money.

Onto the pictures!

Here is the before:

And after!

Is it weird that we picked a red light with a blue backround? I thought it would be nice for a splash of color but it sort of looks like we're entering Hell as we proceed through the red glow downward into the basement.